I Know What I'm Doing..Sheesh!

Hair stylists really ought to get into landscaping. The reason this popped into my head was that my lawn needed to be mowed and I won't have the time, energy nor motivation to do it in the next four days. If ignored four days hence, it'll look grubby and disheveled. So I went out and did it. Once cut I looked back and thought, “There, just like a new haircut, all neat and trim.”

Andy LeCompte could sell grass shampoo and perhaps a stylish lawnmower that doesn't leave split ends. Ah, it's been done already, Scotts fertilizer company makes their living off of neurotic homeowners who equate a neat lawn with moral hygiene.

And in fact that's what it's all about, framing the house, keeping it's “face” neat, clean and presentable. An upstanding member of the community is a house that's well scrubbed!. My home's face is now admissible to the neighborhood for another couple of weeks. I pray it doesn't rain and the sun bakes all plant life into dormancy so I don't have to mow anything. 

**

I once said my learning curve for self training or being coached for that matter looks like hell at first. I make a zillion mistakes but fairly quickly I tend to “get it.” The problem occurs if the discipline is dangerous. Chains saws for that matter. There isn't much forgiveness early on in the learning curve for that kind of study. You screw up once and....it's 911.

Then there's the opposite. The “I Know What I'm Doing” attitude. Now here's one I've been seriously guilty of because “I know what I'm doing, I've done it a million times before...” Experience tends to work since you have worked with something a lot, but then there are those times...

Years ago in another career I worked for a group home that had a lawn. In an effort to cut costs, the agency had fired their outside landscaping teams. They then suggested that the employees of the various homes cut their own lawns. We were paid for it.

So, one late July I'm out, making nice straight passes back and forth in the front yard, with my brain going elsewhere as it does when I do a repetitive task. That's doable really, you can apply just enough attention to something that bores the f out of you and still get it done, while you make plans to get good and drunk at Misquamicut beach one day.

Mowers have that chute where it expels the clippings and from all lawn mowers I worked with, they get clogged. I had learned, since I was a teen, to quickly flick the obstruction out, either with my foot or hand. I became pretty adept at it and for years I was successful doing it without one problem.

That day however was different. The mower chute became clogged and I kneeled down in front of it and then flicked out the clog. But that's when I felt a strange sensation. I felt 10-15 weird vibrations in my hand as I did it. I then noticed my white painters pants looked like someone had flicked a paintbrush full of red paint all over them.

I was in NO pain whatsoever and was confused. What the hell just happened? What was that sensation?

Then slowly, my eyes tracked to my left hand.

Jesus H Christ. I never thought that any part of my body would look like freshly ground hamburger. I had some pretty good spills in my life, falling off a bikes, a freight train and a few car crashes where my idiot friends treated Newport Ave like a dragster strip. But none of those times did I see any part of my body opened up and twisted like that.

I ran into the home, wrapped a towel around the index and middle fingers of my left hand and sat down. Nick, another employee there, wanted to see “how bad it was” and I took off the towel but I  refused to look. All he said was, “Wow.”

“Wow” isn't a good word sometimes.

A few minutes later A. comes through the door and suggests I go to Kent County as it doesn't look like Band Aids will help much.

As we were driving to Kent, I was preparing a speech to tell the nurses and Dr's about what I had done.

Dr: “You stuck your hand inside a running lawn mower?”

The Fool: “Wait! There's a reason why I did! You see, for years I've been able to...”

Of course they talked about it. I'm sure one went around the corner and said, “Hey, Margaret, go to bed 4 and see the tard who shoved his hand in a lawn mower! No joke, he did it!”

You know how many times I had to tell that story? About my being able, for years, to magically clean out a running lawn mower chute with bare body parts? Nearly every nurse, Dr and hand surgeon I met.

After being X-rayed and stuck with antibiotic needles, the Dr asked: “You see anything on the lawn, I mean besides blood?”

“No..why?” I ask.

“Well, from the X ray, you no longer have any bone in the tip of your middle finger....I wondered if you saw it on the lawn..if so, we could put it back. It's pretty resilient, it can stay out of your body for quite a while and still 'be good.'

“No” I say, “I saw nothing.” The truth is, probably, that bone was turned into bone meal. It's now part of the ecosystem in western Cranston now.

After being sutured up, given an appointment for hand surgeon at a later time, I go home. For weeks I have to hear...

“You did WHAT? You put your hand inside a RUNNING mower?”

Cue the story again. “Look, I've been able to, for years, clear that chute...”

**

My Hand Surgeon.

Once my fingers healed and they healed into a knobby scar tissue oddity, I met the hand surgeon.

He had told me that he would have to cut it all up again and re-suture things so they'd grow back “normal” looking. He also said I didn't really need a bone in the top of my middle finger since scar tissue in there would be nearly hard enough to provide some structure. As for the lack of feeling in those fingers, he said the nerves will regrow but it'll take months.

Ok, great, cut away...

Once that was done, he gave a six month appointment to return to see if everything healed up as it should.

Three months later as I was reading the ProJo, I come across an interesting story. Apparently a Kent County Dr had shot his own hand with a .357 revolver while “cleaning” it. I thought for a moment...”Hmm..was it the hand surgeon? The ER Dr? Or was it no one I knew?” I let it go as life goes on.

My six month appointment is due and I return. They bring me into the room with the hand surgeon and he starts to look and manipulate my hand. He also asks if everything is OK. As he was doing this I noticed a large, star shaped scar on the palm of his hand.

“Holy Shit...it WAS him!” I think. I seen bullet holes in dead animals, usually if it's a contact shot where the muzzle of the firearm was resting against the skin. The pressure blows out a weird star shaped wound. I can't keep quiet so I blurt out...

“So....I'm NOT the only one!” I say.

“Huh?” says the Doc.

“Your hand...you're the one who shot himself!” I say.

I see the look on his face, it's the same look I had on mine when trying to explain to everyone else what I did.

He comes forth and tells the real story. He wasn't cleaning anything. He tells me he was trying a old gunslingers' gun trick called a Road Agent spin. It's where you look like your surrendering your weapon, to be taken from your hand, but at the last moment you can drop, spin it and fire into the bad ass Sheriff who's taking you for Fort Laramie to be hanged.

Here's the actual trick...

Click Pic and Watch

“It went off.” he says. “Right through my hand, through the TV set and into the next room.”

“Damn, you are lucky, had there been another person in there...” I say.

“Yep...” he says.

I felt A LOT better about my little accident after learning a hand surgeon, SHOT his own hand.

Anyways, I no longer flip anything out of the chute. I just jack the mower up and down till it falls out on it's own...and my yard is pretty enough to date once again. 

 See? All healed. You'd never know had I not told you!